beBee Europe

Back To School, Britain!And you won't like it – no repeater ever doesIn my infinite wisdom - which luckily even we bullheaded trouble-seekers acquire over time – I managed to NOT be in Britain at the moment it started unravelling. Good for me! Not so good for the UK. I...

#11 It is not the end of the World like some pundits seem to predict. Britain is, and will remain the world's 5th largest economy. I think part of the reason for creating the EU was to be able to compete with a potentially uniting Asia, but Asia is still very fragmented and certainly not the economic powerhouse many predicted. The vote yesterday was very much a selfish vote, yes, but hardly surprising as the Brits pride themselves on their "glorious" past. As a Brit myself, I was not in favour of Brexit, but life will go on, and a divorce does not mean we cannot still be good friends.

#10 Dear @Dean Owen, again you give me more credit than I deserve! It's just the mileage, nothing more. As you know, I do normally drag the process out (checking every last idiom, to be on the safe side). But this one I spewed out in an hour or so. It took forever to come up with the image though! At first I had no idea how to illustrate this rambling, then the knight kinda put itself together, in PowerPoint. Thanks very much for your kind words and for sharing. And for what it's worth, I was completely taken by surprise by the result of the vote.

I felt like I was reading an Op-Ed piece in the economist, such is the level of this article @Maja Vujovic. I can't fathom that you wrote this yesterday, but am more likely to assume you spent a few weeks preparing two versions to cover both possible outcomes. Many writers describe themselves as prolific, but you demonstrate that it is quality, not quantity.

#8 Thank you , @Paul Walters. Much appreciated. We are having a growing mass protest drive here, in Belgrade, every other Saturday, to put our naughty government in its place. You know things have gone to the dogs when Serbia is the most rational one of the three countries.

Nice Piece Maja. My view as a Brit living abroad is that Britain just shot themselves in the foot and it wasn't even accidental. Let's wait until November and see if th American voters can be even dumber!!!

#4 Things have changed; the classic balance of power is no more; it's all askew. Mass media are now not the control mechanism, but a big part of the establishment. Look at how they fail to cover Bernie Sanders objectively. The old checks and balances are disfunctional. So new ones have to be instituted. Alas, it rarely happens voluntarily. The powers that be won't yield the power voluntarily. They have to be convinced. We cannot grasp these major developments; the pendulum of history moves above our heads and beyond our gaze. But I know one thing. You cannot hire heroes. You have to find them in your midst. (That's a hands-on tip.) The pendulum will hit you for sure. The choice is whether you'll await it helpless or stand up to it. I made my choice long ago, which is why all this meandering happened. It didn't change history. But it's on the record - that someone stood up to our chief hate-monger and exposed him, even for a brief moment. My way of life disintegrated as a result, but it would have been disrupted either way. This way, I go to bed knowing I did the right thing. Had others done the same, their own little bit each, the Balkan bloodshed would have been avoided. It's a numbers game. That's my answer. Stand up, each of you. Choose. You'll either fix your system now or you'll have to rebuild it when it crumbles. My bet - as I wrote in this post - is we will all get to learn that lesson (about coexistence, humility, honesty, equality etc.) yet again. The hard way. Avoid a drizzle today; then spend five years in a ditch, in a deluge, under fire. That's Brexit in brief.

#4 Pamela, my dear, first, thank you for reading. Then for commenting so generously. Corruption isn't an EU patten t and UK is not greed-free. But domestic hoodlums are closer to heart that the foreign ones? Put up with a hate-monger in the WH because he will get there legally? Last fall, when Jon Stewart withdrew, I frantically wrote a post about events in Serbia that were the mirror image of what's happening in the US nowadays (It's on Medium, if you're interested.) Only those things happened to us long ago, so we now readily recognize the signs. It's the 'frog on the stove' kind of thing. We all tolerate more and more things that should be unacceptable and then we wonder why and how we got boiled. Didn't your government buy out the failing banks with tax payers' money seven years ago? And sure enough, did not those reckless bankers divvy up huge bonuses at the year end? And, to the best of my knowledge, all of you just stood by and did nothing about it. Iceland allowed its banks to go bankrupt. And put their bankers in jail, where they belong for squandering so much of other people's money. And their economy sprung up. So there are other options. It just takes courage and resolve. And likely some leaders yet unknown... (continued - I hit the limit)

So what was the answer Maja? Escort them out? We just had the Democrats in a 24 hour sit-in because of the non-existence of gun laws. The Supreme Court is publicly admonishing the Congress for failing the country. The voice of the people are being ignored. So what was the answer? Our election is still 5 months away and if something doesn't happen, a hate monger could be in the White House. He's in Scotland today celebrating Brexit. I read that the Leave won because not enough Londoners got out to vote because of weather. BECAUSE OF WEATHER. It was so important and the elite so sure of themselves that they allowed this to happen or they are so pampered they didn't want to get wet. This is about the non-educated, working slob that had decisions about their lives handed to them. No they didn't understand the full ramifications, all they knew was they were struggling under the burden of just existing. They are considered the ignorant masses, well ignorant of the economics they may be but they know enough to know life was getting harder and harder while they watched the elite get richer and richer. Fear and anger combined to blind them to all else but their struggles. What am I basing this on? Because I see this happening in the U.S. and if we head in the same direction then that hate monger is going to be sitting in the White House. Then the world best get ready, because my prediction is; all hell will break loose. Brexit will seem like a ripple in the ocean.

my dear my situation is same you here in iraq because more regrets born in war times ,system military war with kurdish in 1973 ,iran war in 1980,kuwait and saudi war in 1990 ,sanction international in 1990-2003,government stolen in 2003 and till now,that my simple life my friend all of them is poverty,violence ,crisis .you know I complete college by difficulty .

What will a Brexit mean for UK Expats: Answering some of the FAQ´s With a little over a week to go until the British public decide the fate of the UK and our position within Europe, I wanted to put the feelers out and see how this resonates with the rest of my connections who suffer the same fate I do. As a Fellow...

#3 Thank you for the kind words and the share @Dean Owen. It´s certainly going to be an interesting year in politics. Either way, I can see a lot of pressure being put on Cameron to step down after the referendum, especially if we leave. Sadly I don´t think the UK Government have put any plan of action in place for a leave vote, all their cards have been played into convincing the public that we need to remain. No exit strategy has been organised, and if the polls are right we could very well be seeing a UK exit. As for Trump, don´t even get me started lol